At least that’s what Bill Eddins says in his post from Thursday where he talks about how important it is for smaller ensembles to maintain that all-important personal connection with their audience.
The larger the orchestra the more one can be removed from society in general, mainly because your life is wrapped up in The Über-Orchestra that you belong to.
In “smaller” orchestras? The connection between you and your peeps is that much more important. You have a much, much smaller margin for error. If your organization is perceived in the community as being even more elitist than normal you have a huge mountain to climb if you ever get into trouble. In this day and age it is vitaly important that these smaller ensembles work diligently at keeping a personal relationship with the community at large.
This is all in relation to a new video produced by the Professional Orchestra Musicians of the Grand Rapids Symphony. I love it, and hope that we might be able to something like it here with the Oregon Symphony Players Association.